Turkey’s value to Europe and the US as a close partner helping manage regional problems has been re-emphasized by the Gaza crisis. As the fighting threatened to spin out of control, Turkish diplomats showed they could reach parts other diplomats cannot by talking directly to senior Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally consulted Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Syria as part of a wider mediation effort. And it was Erdogan, a careful cultivator of relations with Tehran, who kept open lines of communication to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an ardent Hamas supporter.
The successful expansion of Turkish influence in the Middle East and beyond under Erdogan’s moderate government has been dubbed “neo-Ottomanism,” suggesting a revival by other means of Turkey’s once extensive but now defunct empire. Hurriyet newspaper has claimed Turkish diplomacy has entered a new “golden age,” acting as a crossroads between East and West, Islam and secular Christendom.
That may be overstating the case. But Turkey’s middleman efforts, also including its facilitation of proximity talks between Israel and Syria, its role as a non-Russian-controlled conduit for gas and oil, and its support for NATO operations in Afghanistan (it has 1,500 troops there), do not receive the recognition in the West that they deserve, Turkish analysts claim.
On the contrary, they say, Turkey is still regarded with suspicion, if not hostility, by influential leaders in Europe and the US, while its contributions are belittled and its concerns ignored. “Strategically wedged between Europe, the Caucasus and the Middle East, Turkey is a key actor in the biggest foreign policy challenges facing the new US administration: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and a newly belligerent Russia,” said columnist Amberin Zaman, writing for the German Marshall Fund of the US.
But Zaman argued that Barack Obama had needlessly placed Turkey’s cooperation at risk by promising to recognize as genocide the slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 — an interpretation of history fiercely rejected by Turks. If Obama ignored Turkey’s ground-breaking opening to Armenia last year and sided with Yerevan, Western hopes of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute and keeping the Russians at bay in Azerbaijan would not be the only casualties, he predicted. Such as move would “wreck Turkish-American relations for good.”
Like others in the region, Turks hope Obama will adopt a more constructive approach to tackling Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions; and most welcome US military withdrawal from Iraq. But Ankara is also looking for a change in perceived US attitudes to the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which maintains bases along Turkey’s border in northern Iraq and is held responsible for years of violent unrest.
Turkey’s grievances with Europe, specifically over Ankara’s bid for EU membership, also arise in part from a sense that their interlocutors are not being entirely straightforward. “We don’t ask for privileges, what we ask for is equal and fair treatment,” Erdogan said in Brussels on Monday, his first visit for four years. He repeated complaints that many “chapters” of the accession negotiations were being delayed for specious political reasons. Despite reduced enthusiasm among Turks, he said EU membership remained a top priority.
With leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy apparently content to pander to anti-Turkish public sentiment, and with Austria’s neo-fascist parties endlessly obsessing about “Turks at the gate,” Erdogan’s gripe seems justified. But as the International Crisis Group noted in a recent report, both Europe and Turkey have good reasons to overcome such barriers — and Turkey’s valuable regional clout is foremost among them.
